We’ve seen Picard and the gang play poker together, but, what purpose would gambling serve? Money is abolished and nearly anything material you could want is a replicator away. What do gambling hotspots like Las Vegas or Atlantic City look like?
We’ve seen Picard and the gang play poker together, but, what purpose would gambling serve? Money is abolished and nearly anything material you could want is a replicator away. What do gambling hotspots like Las Vegas or Atlantic City look like?
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Las Vegas has likely shifted to place far more weight on having good experiences. Gaming is probably still there, but a lot more people likely go for the food, the shows, the music, the spas, and other unique, relaxing or life affirming experiences – those are the sorts of things 24th century humans do for fun.
As for how gaming works, I’m sure it’s a far fairer and more fun than what we see today. No one is draining their bank accounts into slot machines. There’d be more ethics and transparency, after all there’s no motivation to screw other people over for a buck.
While money doesn’t exist in the Federation, unique items that can’t be replicated and either have limited supply or strong provenance still have value. For example, handcrafted artworks, antiques, a bottle of Chateau Picard or a reservation for a meal at Sisko’s in New Orleans.
Casinos would hold a lot of tournaments with these one of a kind prizes available for the winners. Or, perhaps you’re given a stack of chips when you arrive in the city, a symbolic currency, and you play whatever games you want, and then see what unique prize or item you can get for whatever you have, or if you lost, go home with a good story. Kinda like a grown up version of the tickets you get at amusement arcades.
Casual play is almost certainly just for fun, the thrill of winning and the personal accolade of being the best. Given the time people can spend on their hobbies in the 24thC, there might even be Federation leagues for poker, backgammon, and so on.
The actual answer here may well be: Bombed in ww3, abandoned when the global economy and tourism then died, and forgotten by the time real construction was rolling decades later.
DABO!!!!
The answer is at Quark’s, my friend! Come on down for a cool mug of Root Beer and win some latinum at our very loose tables!
The weekly poker game among senior officers on the Enterprise is for fun. Its for the fun of the game, bragging rights, and not really anything else.
If you are a Federation citizen you don’t really need money like Gold-Pressed Latinum but if you have some it lets you interact with non-federation societies more easily. Quarks Bar & places like it are intended as profit-making enterprises and want you to pay in Latinum. There are free Replicators in a lot of the living quarters, but people clearly still want to go out to the bar.
Quark talks a lot about his inventory and supply chain, implying that a lot of the drinks he serves are real, not replicated. A number of characters refer to replicated food tasting slightly different than the real thing so I would assume that real, non-replicated liquor is a bit of a luxury people will pay for & I’m sure Quark is charging for it. So people *do* need money to go to places like Quarks, meaning that money has some value even for Starfleet officers that all have replicators in their quarters.
I assume that committed gamblers can still compete for foreign currencies such as Gold-Pressed Latinum or other civilizations’ legal currencies.
Or gamblers for sport, seeking dopamine and thrill of victory but not craving material wealth, may just compete for points or clout on some centralized system, like 24th-century Steam achievements or ladder-board.
For fun and for ego. There are also some who gamble for latinum, one of the few things that can’t be replicated so still has a value.
Money in Star Trek isn’t quite as “abolished” as we were led to believe early-on. Whereas there’s practically unlimited energy and most things can be easily replicated, some things do still have value. For instance, authentic hand-made artwork, or your own ship. Money still exists, both to facilitate the purchases of those things and to facilitate interactions with other cultures that are still more capitalistic.
With that in mind, gambling still exists, and Vegas still exists, the stakes are just a little bit lower since there’s basically a much higher safety net if you lose it all.